


That Which Is in Part

by bold_seer



Category: Atonement (2007)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: Life had a turning point, Robbie knew, but no dénouement.





	That Which Is in Part

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluemoonflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluemoonflower/gifts).



> _You see, I couldn’t any longer imagine what purpose would be served by it. (...) By honesty, or reality._  
>  \- Briony, _Atonement_

After they’d made love, he lit a cigarette, still a little dizzy from it. Always amazed that one could become so fulfilled by another person.

He took a deep breath and passed it on to Cee, on the other side of the bed, the outline of her legs visible even in the moderate darkness. She was wearing a flimsy slip that barely covered her breasts, one strap falling off her shoulder. In daylight, it had a wispy colour. Now, transformed, it made him think of the dress she’d worn in the library, the first time they had ever –

Close, close, as close as two bodies could be, hers almost indistinguishable from his. One blissful moment, before Briony.

They rarely talked about the past, the lie or her family. It was just hanging between them, a silent shared history that no one else knew about. It brought them together, them alone inside this bubble, them against the world. But he was also conscious of its weight, how it cut them off from each other, as if there were still bars between them.

Sometimes he had the urge to shock her with what life was like in prison. Then she’d look at him, into his eyes, and he didn’t have to.

Of course, most of the time it didn’t matter who they were, anyway. They were just Cecilia, a nurse, and Robbie, like any soldier. Any couple.

His thoughts turned blank and empty, as he drifted off to sleep. When he woke up, Briony was standing in the kitchen.

It was jarring to meet her again. To witness the unbearable unfairness: she’d grown up, was older in years if nothing else, while he’d been stuck with ruminations on what should’ve been (five years’ studies, five years’ love), future and freedom always out of reach. All he could think of was the stupid, stupid little girl. 

Yet she, too, seemed stagnant somehow. Like she hadn’t lost the wide-eyed awkwardness of a peculiar child.

“I was mistaken,” she said softly, as if that was it. All she had to offer. Had he really waited five years to hear this, a repeal shorter and more subdued than his conviction?

He wanted to hurt her. Not commit the crime he’d been convicted of, or any specific crime, just hurt her in some undefinably abstract way, so that she would feel a fraction of the pain she had caused.

He wanted to never see her again, never be reminded of her existence.

He bit back some of his anger, letting the disillusionment shine through instead: “Because I wasn’t one of you.” He didn’t want to think about them, any of them in that family that had once been like a _family_. Except, in all the crucial ways. A bitter pill to swallow still, trading Cambridge for prison. Swapping one uniform for another.

“No,” said Briony in a very small voice. She wouldn’t look at him, and he couldn’t look at her. “Because of the note.” Pause. Rethink. Remember. That hot summer’s day when anything felt possible. Standing at the crossroads of time, everything ahead of him. A number of possibilities. Two notes. Two paths. One mistake. “Because I didn’t understand what I saw. Outside or later. I was jealous. Of you, of C-” She couldn’t. “Cec– my sister. I thought, I see it now.”

“See it now,” he echoed. _Cee._ Funny that it should matter, one person believing you when no one else did, even though you knew the truth yourself. That a child could do so much damage and then just get to grow up, without taking responsibility for any of it. For who else was there to blame?

“Paul Marshall. He married Lola.”

“My god,” said Cecilia.

“I can change things,” Briony protested. “Write down everything. Everything, as it happened. I’ll tell everyone.” And she would; the story that kept evolving. “The police, the court, my family.”

Cecilia looked at him. “Darling, she’s not a reliable witness. And Lola won’t testify.” Her voice was devoid of anything, least of all hope, and he loved her all the more for it. “They’ll never convict him.”

“No.” He closed his eyes and shut out the world. For a moment, he could’ve been anywhere. At Cambridge, perhaps, his desk buried in books, learning about every bone in the human body. Or it was summer, he’d been gardening and had allowed himself a break - couldn’t he feel the heat on his skin? But then Briony shattered the silence. His thoughts, fantasies or were they memories, scattered.

“Please let me make it right.”

He’d already made up his mind. “You can tell the world you’re a liar for all I care, but I am done with you.”

She was older in years, but still essentially the same child, who wanted to orchestrate events as and when they suited her. As if his life was a game to her. As if he was an unwitting participant in a play, one that was already in progress. Too late she’d realised things were spiralling out of control, and tried, frantically to keep the plot together.

But she couldn’t undo anything that had occurred. Write over the past and tie the loose threads of their lives into a neat little bow at the end of the story. Those things were real and had happened to him. Life had a turning point, Robbie knew, but no dénouement. No catharsis.

It didn’t matter, he reminded himself. He was out of there.

Briony left. With her, his anger disappeared. In its place he felt dull resignation, which eventually melted into nothing at all.

They had tea and stale cake in silence, him and Cee, and that was that. After all, they couldn’t alter the past, or the shape of the bloody war, or Briony’s decision. Whether driven by her conscience or compassion, she would turn this visit into something else entirely. Paul Marshall’s guilt, and what he could ever be convicted of.

 _Cee, you’re the only thing_ , he wanted to say, _the only thing._ He didn’t have the words of a doctor or a poet, and she wasn’t a thing, was she.

He knew only how hopelessly he loved her. No, not hopelessly. With a sense of hope -

That sliver of hope that the future was in their hands. He’d go to war. But he would come back. They’d make love again. He felt certain of it.


End file.
